On March 4, 2021, the European Commission presented a legislative proposal to guarantee the equal pay between men and women, which you can take a look at in this link.
This focuses, on the one hand, on establishing measures that guarantee this wage equality, and on the other, proposing reinforcement measures for the company's own workers to avoid any wage discrimination based on sex.
Measures that guarantee equal pay
Regarding the measures that guarantee this wage equality, the following is proposed:
- Prohibition of asking to candidates participating in a selection process based on their salary history.
- Set the salary, or a approximate fork before the candidate attends the interview.
- Other measures that are proposed are very reminiscent of the Royal Decree 902/2020, of October 13, on equal pay between women and men, already in force since last April. You can consult its content in this post. In this sense, the European legislative proposal proposes the following:
- Workers' right to consult the average remuneration levels of your company distributed by category and sex.
- Obligation on the part of companies with more than 250 employees to publish salary differences due to gender.
- To establish a joint evaluation system to correct this difference, as long as it is more than 5% between men and women, and in an unjustified manner.
Likewise, the proposal includes reinforcement measures to avoid this type of inequality. Some of them contemplate the payment of compensation to those people who have proven to be victims of this salary difference in an unjustified manner.
Furthermore, they propose sanctions for companies that participate in this type of actions, and the burden of proof is transferred to the companies themselves. Consequently, they will be the ones who have the obligation to prove the justification of the difference in salary between people of different sexes when they perform the same functions.
Next steps
The European Commission must present this proposal to Parliament and the Council. If approved, a period of two years will be established for national countries to adopt their legal system and other instruments to comply with the Directive.
What do you think of these measures? Do you think that Spain is prepared for all these changes or, on the contrary, do you see it as a utopia? If you want to train in this field of work and be up to date on topics such as the one raised above, the Master in Human Resources: People Management, Talent Development and Labor Management It will make you become a Human Resources professional.
